***********control room is under a mountain, it would relate more to noah than before because the ark ran aground on mount arafat as the waters receded....i wouldn't put it past bungie to have the mountain that the control room is under be called mount tarara or some word really close the Ararat...although that might be too obvious*********

***************The Covenant landed in north Africa, right? Admiral Hood says so himself: "This is the only place on Earth they decided to land, that prophet is going to tell us why." and that's the region where (get ready) Moses lead the Israelites on a Great Journey to freedom from slavery in Egypt, where they were led by the Ark of the Covenant to take back the holy land***********

**********They land in Mombasa, far from where Moses led the Israelites on the Exodus, Mombasa is farther south and along the coast. There is no mention of this in the Bible. The farthest south anyone has gone in the Bible is Egypt. However, Africa is considered the Cradle of Man and Mombasa could of been just a staging area for the Covenant. No one really knows where the Ark of Covenant ended up so who knows, maybe it is in Mombasa...***********

*********Tartarus is actualy a greek reference to the deepest pits of the underworld where the Horrible souls are tormented with tasks for all eterninty like rolling a boulder to the top of a hill and then it rolls back down right before it reaches the top or even teh guy with thirst and hunger who had to stand in a stream that droppped in level when he stooped to drink and the fruit branches above his head would get higher as he reached for them. Of course as we all know words get readapted for other peoples uses so I dont doubt he said it, but it was originaly Greek.************

********************************Tartarus was also used in one of paul's epistles in place of the word Hell.***********************

******isnt there a passage in the gospels where it says that the pharasites said that jesus was satan because he casted out demons i find a connection there the covenant call master chief a demon but the chief is casting out the real demons (teh flood) i cant find the passage becasue i dont have enough time. Yes,Jesus says after the pharisees accuse him of being satan...He says, can satan drive out satan? If a house is divided amongst itself it cannot stand so as is if satan is divided against himself he cannot stand.*******

************Ok I was playing through Campaign on halo 2 and i guess one more time finally connected the dots for me, although I don't know what exactly it means if anything...keep in mind this is shaky at best. The covenant call the monitors "oracles" and what do oracles do, they tell the future in a type of prophecy. So...looking at 343 Guilty Spark which is the only monitor in both halos to really have a lot to say. So I went to the book of the first prophet in the bible, the prophet Isaiah. In verse 34:3 it says: "Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood". It's referring to the last judgement and what will happen to those who are not faithful or not worthy in the eyes of God. The whole corpses thing reminds me of the Flood, especially because in the books chief talks about that really thick stench of the Flood and the arbiter even remarks about the stench and that he had smelled it before in the first arbiter mission as he goes into the complex...I don't know it's pretty cool**********

*************Oh man...my verse for 343 Guilty Spark worked perfectly for halo 1 because Chief meets the monitor right before he runs into the flood in full force. But for the second installment of halo, I went to the book of Jeremiah which is the second one in order from Isaiah. In chapter 34 verse 3 it says "You shall not escape from his hand, but shall surely be captured and delivered into his hand; you shall see the king of Babylon (Gravemind) face to face, and you shall go to Babylon" It's pretty nifty it refers to a man who will die in captivity instead of in the heat of battle********

****Ok, I know I've been away a long time but I've finnally gotten around to posting some of the information I fished out of the Koran. The master Chief may very well have been given similarites to a Jesus like character in the Halo setting. It seems even more so in the Koran because Jesus isn't considered the son of God in Islam and therefore the correlation is easier to stick to. Muhammed is reffered to several times through the text of the Koran as an Arbiter. This reinforces my beilef that while Bungie may have started these 2 on opposing sides of this conflict, in the end they truely plan on this being a co-op between the 2. -***********

*********Chapters on The Day of Judgement and the coming of the apocalypse are essetially the same as in the Christian and Jewish faiths. A number of refferences to the activites in the Halo games have already been made and I'll just confirm they hold true in the other major faiths as well. **********

********I'm still holding the belief that the Halo games probably deal more with the Ark in regards to Noah rather than Moses. I'm not ruling it out...just that's what I'm leaning towards. "When the Flood rose high, we bore you in the Ark,That we might make that event a warning to you, and thatthe retaining ear might retain it.But when one blast shall be blown on the trumpet,And the earth and the mountains shall be upheaved, and shallboth be crushed into dust at a single crushing,On that day the woe that must come suddenly shall suddenlycome,And the heaven shall cleave asunder, for on that day it shall be fragile."***********

***********I also think that the reason for the Covanent coming to Earth and the Great Journey may have been more than just activating the rings. Possibly a refference to pilgrimages made to Mecca. I apologize for not grabbing quotes for all of this but I simply find that a book written in verse is too difficult to transcribe when it takes pages of text for the stories to be told. Either way. I hope this helps.*****

************hmmm....silence fills an empty grave now that i have gone but my mind is not at rest for questions linger on i shall ask and you shall answer.....that's sad....i didn't hafta beat the last level to remember that....man i'm a loser...i'll think about it....because i knew there was a purpose to it....that was just plot oriented....

...She could be a Judas... or possibly Eve being tempted by the serpent**********

****************The Ark The empire of the Forerunner was indeed vast. Beneath the surfaces of countless worlds their artifacts and installations lie buried, for the most part untouched by the passage of time. Stones and relics found at each location contained coordinates leading to still others. Many of the Human worlds were located this way: Reach and Earth, being the most recent examples. They were also used to find Halo. The Halos, the seven rings left in their perpetual orbits after activation and the subsequent destruction of their creators, are nothing short of astounding. But as revealed by 343 Guilty Spark, there remains yet another piece of their puzzle.

Hypothesized and speculated on for some time, but only recently revealed, the Ark is still shrouded in mystery. Apparently located on Earth (or perhaps its moon), the Ark is another center from which the Halo network may be activated. It is not known whether the Ark will preserve the lives of those who set it off (unlike the Halos which destroy even the life upon its surface), but because the name itself is an allusion to a sanctuary during storm, it is implied that it will.

Does the location of the Ark have anything to do with the Prophet's mad zeal to annihilate Mankind? What does it mean that Humanity occupies the world of the Ark, and possibly the last haven of the Forerunner in this galaxy? Is this yet another clue as to why 343 seems content to call every Human a "Reclaimer"?**********

******well the Arbiters orginal name was Dervish.Dervish - A member of a Muslim ascetic order, some of which perform whirling devotional dances.2 - The word Dervish, especially in European languages, refers to members of Sufi Muslim ascetic religious fraternities, known for their extreme poverty and austerity, similar to mendicant friars. More religous stuff.************

********Joseph...the story of Joseph comes to mind as the Sangheili commander was once living the most comfortable of Covenant lives, and had it all. Thrust from his happy home by his family, he was cast down into the abyss, a near slave who was already dead. He rose from the ashes anew, reborn as the Arbiter in the same fashion Joseph rose to be ruler of all Egypt, only Pharoh being greater. Re-gaining the special ops commanders respect and trust was equivilant to Joseph revealing himself to his family, and the final battle against his former covenant brother's was symbolic of the loyalty test Joseph put his eldest brother through.

Ooooooor, I'm just drunk, you pick.

And Herc, I was busy DLing all the hi-res divx eps over a dialup, and as you can imagine, took quite some time to finish out before I actively started posting. Not so sure I'm going to be posting much anymore because of brainless morons in other threads who still can't see your point despite spelling it out for them, displaying a pie chart, AND showing them a broken down graph.**************

******a long time since a post, but i got something, prob not that religious but to do with religion, there is a reference to king arthur in the game, on outskirts near tha place with lots of snipers there is a sword in a stone*********

**********Yeah it's a roof trip...well worth it to find it. It's posted all over with videos of how to do it. Yes, the sword in the stone is an very symbolic Christian allegory. The stone is symbolic of Jesus and the sword is like the one mentioned in Ephesians. "...and take the sword which is the word of God, to take the fight to the enemy". Only the worthy may retrieve it and use it to lead with moral courage and fortitude of spirit***********

*********definitely...prima facie it's just a sword in a rock but i mean coupled with all the evidence we've been pulling up why couldn't it be another reference. I mean it was put there intentionally, we know that but I mean it's pretty cool and of all the easter eggs. Why that?***********

*********As someone still stuck on Dial-up (And sub-sequently lacking XBL) I have no choice but to constantly play H 1 and 2 on campaign mode over and over and over again. I have logged roughly 15,000 plus hours on H-1, and am now passing the 1200 hour mark on H 2.

Even before H2 was ever released, there were some facts I had already gathered from listening to the monitor babble on incesantly in the library. If you stuck close enough to him, he states at one point "This installation was built specifically to study and contain the flood, their survival as a species was dependant upon it." Alpha Halo was more than just a prison, it was a suspended containment center because the floodlings the covies originally released would have starved long ago had they not been in stasis.

So why save some of them when they knew it would simply spread once again? As 343 said "I believe now that decision was made in error." No DUH, ya think?

Not only did 343 Guilty spark recognize the Chief as a 'reclaimer' but 2401 penatent tangent as well, meaning the forerunners were either human, or a primate descended humanoid, and more than likely are responsible for the evolution of life on this planet. Somehow they knew their tech would fall into the hands of, at the time primative, aliens non-terrestrial to our planet, which is why they placed the Ark on earth. It was the only way they could have ensured the survival of their 'race', placing certain genetic codes into one particular family of primate which had already split off from the main branch of vine swingers (pun intended) and were beginning to slowly evolve into pre-historic man. The ark could also be responsible for how life on this planet was able to survive the first activation because monkeys sure as hell do have 'sufficient bio mass in order to sustain the flood'.

Why else would the control center require a human to activate the ring? Not to mention the fact the index would only disengage from the saftey lock when someone with human bio signs would reach for it.

Another explanation could be in the obvious gaps in the rings influence because each one only has an effective galactic radius of only 25,000 light years, which is only a total of 175,000 light years. More than enough to span the entire length of the milky way, but obviously there were weak spots in the grid, allowing less evolved forms of life to survive. The covenant evolved worshiping the fore-runners, initally using the relics they found as religious items before developing far enough to understand their scientific significance. Warnings were misconstrued, and the entire collective came to worship a false religion which was un-provable until the Pillar of Autmn stumbled across one of their most sacred icons.

The Sangheili who found the monitor after alpha Halo's destruction learned the truth, and became the heretic leader because unlike the prophets, he listened to what 343 had to say as opposed to hearing what he wanted to.

I find Bungie's sense of humor timeless as the Prophet of Regret was the only one to live up to his name. Mercy was shown none by Truth, who says anything but. "Noble Mercy is by my side..." yeah right.

What I don't get is, how the hell did gravemind survive? It's obvious the flood posses no technology other than what they can take from others so my guess was that despite the fact he knew where he could find food, he had no means of transporting himself to Earth. My guess is all space capable vessels became derelict on or in orbit of the gas giant after the rings were activated because the teathered station there was the forerunners last line of defense and would be the focal point for the floods attack. Simple minded they are not, but single minded they are, food being their primary concern because despite being capable of traversing the void, they were incapable of doing such because the surviving forerunners were the only food source available. He probably suspended himself in whatever type of containment field used on the rings in order to survive, listening carefully for signs of intelligent life to once again evolve in the milky way.

Perhaps he had been cohearcing the Covenant remotely the entire time somehow, knowing that once found, they would once again release the flood as well as provide them all the nourishment they would need.*****************

Here u go guys, but this is still only like 1/3 of the other thread, so ill try and get them over here as well

hey everybody,sorry i've been away so long, yeah the religious references thread was started by darknightmare before the forerunner ark thread...it's amazing, the longer I spend in the Word the more blatantly obvious some of these references are.

okay, i know that its stupid of me to revive this once again, but have u guys listened to what cortana has said in the halo 3 video, i have bad speakers so i can hear it that well, but it did say some stuff that sounded it like it belonged in here